An experience of the Maasai culture (2)

• Food & meals

If you ask any Kenyan what the Maasai eat, you will get a lot of “meat and milk answers” and “blood” sometimes. I am not about to deny any of these answers. But here is what I saw and learnt:

In the morning, breakfast is white tea. The tea has plenty of milk in it (given milk isn’t a nightmare for most community members here anyway). There is not any Maasai whom I came across who takes black tea. It is actually viewed as a sign of extreme poverty to enjoy a cup of black tea. Albeit, there are kids here who do not know anything like black tea. While there, I   I was confronted severally about taking hot water with sugar; not tea. People barely realize that tea is the tea leaves, not the combination of milk and water.

Nobody worries about breakfast “escort”. Most people take at least 2 cups of white tea with nothing. There is no worry of buying bread, or preparing sweet potatoes or mandazi etc for breakfast, because it is normal to have the tea with nothing! This was quite unique to me. In my community people only take tea with nothing if there is no money or means to get the escort. For us, it is not a choice to have a breakfast of tea only, it is a circumstance.

I was at home rarely for lunch, but for the very few times I was present, and from my interaction with the community members, I learn't that the Maasai do not prepare ugali for lunch most of the time. Even in my former high school, we never had ugali for lunch as it is considered too heavy a meal for an afternoon. For lunch, the typical meals are: rice, potatoes, matoke, githeri, beans, pumpkin and green grams. There may be a few people who prepare ugali for lunch, but in my host house there was not a single day that ugali was the meal served for lunch.

Having said ugali is not a typical meal for lunch, this may have sounded like the community doesn’t like it. Well, that is not true! The Maasai do actually like ugali very much! It is “the meal for dinner”. To prove that, I noticed my host family prepared ugali every single night of my stay except for 2 nights. And asking Naserian, she would tell me she has to eat ugali at night or chapatti as the alternative….no other meal! It is believed that ugali gives people enough strength to take them through the night to the next morning. Any other meal would literary wake people out of slumber in the course of the night.  I am not about to complain or judge this mentality. Usually, the ugali is prepared with very nice tasting vegetables. I loved pumpkin leaves vegetables of all the vegetables I ate, they are very delicious and usually had a tinge of milk/cream in them. This makes the whole meal balanced.

A cup of fresh or fermented milk every day is a routine in the Maasai community. For those who have enough cows to supply milk, everyone gets to enjoy a cup of milk every evening (I believe) as they relish the meal of ugali. I noticed that even the local boarding schools will strive to provide students with a cup (or half cup) of milk once a week as part of the schools’ meal. Milk is therefore a signature delicacy of the community. I am still tempted to think that is part of the secret behind most Maasai children leading a healthy life. They rarely experience protein deficiency diseases.

I learn't that in as much as the community owns plenty of livestock, they do not slaughter them every now and then nor do they feed in meat always for that matter. During communal occasions, large cows would however be slaughtered. Save for the occasions, meat is not an “everyday” meal as stereotyped by most of us about the Maasai.

• Greetings verbally/non verbally.

The non-verbal greeting

Growing up, my mom always reminded us to greet the elderly. Anytime we had visitors, we were expected to drop whatever chore we were doing, walk to the living room and greet the visitors before embarking. Every child is raised up to respect older people, and more greet them. It has never been an elderly greeting a child, it is the other way round. The common salutation style is a hand shake.

In the Maasai community, younger people bow to  “blessed” by the elderly as a form of greeting. I call this the “blessing method of greeting”. My first encounter with the greeting was when a colleague and I were strolling. We came across a group of elderly people and she signaled that we should greet them. I went ahead to give a hand-shake only to notice that my friend was “receiving a blessing!” I was very curious to know why she/they did that! In Uganda, ladies get down on their knees when greeting elderly men. Almost a similar culture is in Tanzania where women stoop a bit while greeting the elderly. In Kenya, we probably have some of these greeting cultures but not in my community. While in Enoosaen, I would feel great and important every time children presented their heads so I could greet them. As long as one is older than the second party, he/she is culturally allowed to 'bless' the second party.

Personally, I think greetings by “blessings” are a lot more fun, courteous and “healthier” than plain handshakes. This should be the way to go!

The verbal greetings

In the Maasai culture, men and women have a different phrase used to greet either party. I recall the phrase used when greeting a lady because it is what I was accustomed to. Saying hello as “Takwenya” to a lady and getting a reply of “ikoo” from her is not the unique part of the culture. The unique part is ‘from whom and to whom the greeting is directed in relation to the age difference’. In this case, the older person (man or woman) takes the initiative to say “Takwenya” to the lady. And the younger party (a lady) responds by saying “ikoo”. Again, I was very curious to know why it had to be an older person saying Takwenya  when our African culture expects a younger person to greet the older one. This is the reason I was given, ‘if you translate Takwenya into English or Swahili, it conveys a meaning similar to hello or habari (which thereby makes it right for anyone to say hello). However, in the Maasai language, it doesn’t quite portray a similar meaning literally. It actually comes out a little rude for a younger person like me to say Takwenya to my mom/dad or uncle/aunt or an older neighbor.